A few weeks after Republican Rep. Renee Ellmers of North Carolina told Newsmax she was "waiting, watching, and praying" about a challenge to Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan next year, the two-term lawmaker is already running into some rough sailing within her own party.
"We don't like her," Barney Keller, spokesman for the anti-tax Club for Growth, told McClatchey News last week. He said the Club's political action committee "doesn't support liberals like Renee Ellmers for Congress."
While Ellmers' voting record is 91 percent with the American Conservative Union and she has solid credentials as a social issues conservative, the former nurse has been criticized for voting to increase the debt ceiling in 2011 and for supporting a broad spending bill to avoid a government shutdown.
So far, Ellmers has raised only $100,000, while Hagan has stockpiled more than $1.6 million in her campaign kitty.
John Gizzi is chief political correspondent and White House correspondent for Newsmax.
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